Gary Walts/The Post-StandardSyracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, left, Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney and county Legislature Chairman James Rhinehart talk about the $280 million per year sales tax distribution agreement approved by the Legislature on Tuesday.

Editors' note: This story was written by Tim Knauss and Meghan Rubado.

Syracuse, NY - After weeks of heated debate, Onondaga County legislators united Tuesday to approve a radically new plan for distributing $280 million a year in sales taxes.

Assuming the 10-year deal passes the Syracuse Common Council, as expected, it will affect governments large and small throughout the county.

It will force the town of Geddes to find new ways to pay for police protection and road work. It could force deeper budget cuts next year for many villages, school districts and the city of Syracuse.

And, depending on next year’s county budget, the new deal could mean higher property tax payments for the residents of some suburban towns.

In a unanimous vote that surprised even some of the members, a Legislature dominated by representatives from the suburbs voted to end the longstanding practice of giving nearly one-third of the sales tax money to suburban towns, villages and school districts.

The new plan scales back those payments from about $87 million this year to just $8 million three years from now, leaving some suburban officials unhappy.

“We got screwed,” said Geddes Supervisor Manny Falcone.

The Legislature also cut the city of Syracuse’s sales tax revenue by more than $10 million next year, but restored that money in subsequent years, keeping the city about level over nine out of 10 years. Mayor Stephanie Miner, who had previously agreed to those terms, endorsed the new plan.

The county will increase its own share from 46 percent to 74 percent, adding money that legislators said they hope will bring lower property taxes after they cover the rising cost of mandated services.

Legislator after legislator rose Tuesday to celebrate the fact that representatives from city and suburbs, Democrats and Republicans, had united to settle one of the most wrenching issues they had faced. Several legislators said they think the bipartisan sales-tax deal may herald a new era of cooperation.

“If we maintain what happened here today, there’s a good possibility the culture down here will change,” said Legislator Sam Laguzza, D-Syracuse. “You’ve just seen 12 suburban legislators support the city of Syracuse. Come on! That didn’t happen before.”

But behind Tuesday’s unity — a “Kum Ba Yah” moment, as some legislators called it — lay several months of hard-fisted negotiations.

Days after she took office in January, Miner met with County Executive Joanie Mahoney, then with Legislature Chairman James Rhinehart, and began staking out the city’s position in the sales-tax debate. Over the course of five or six weeks, Democrat Miner and Republican Mahoney worked out a deal that both said they could live with.

Miner agreed to give up $10 million during the first year in return for having the money restored in subsequent years with an assurance the city eventually would get about 24 percent of total revenues.

The Mahoney-Miner plan, as it was called, set off alarms among some suburban legislators, who feared constituents in some towns would pay higher taxes. But Miner never backed down. And Tuesday, she got just what she had bargained for.

The package approved by the Legislature is similar to what Miner and Mahoney had negotiated.

There were, however, a couple of last-minute tweaks that made the deal more palatable to some suburban lawmakers.

Legislator Kevin Holmquist, R-Manlius, came up with a plan for the county to enter side agreements with 15 villages that would guarantee them a total of $4 million a year, about half what they receive now from sales tax. Holmquist’s district includes three villages — Minoa, Manlius and Fayetteville. Many villages rely on sales tax money for up to one-third of their budgets.

“To the villages, this money is absolutely critical,” Holmquist said.

Village mayors said they are happy to have the money, but will struggle to make ends meet.

“Part of me is thankful it’s not zero,” said Fayetteville Mayor Mark Olson. ’’But we’re going to have to make a lot of adjustments to get a balanced budget next year.”

“There was a recognition that villages play an important role in Onondaga County government,” said Baldwinsville Mayor Joe Saraceni, who watched the vote Tuesday. “I think this is an agreement that protects both the city’s and the villages’ interests.”

Geddes Supervisor Falcone was less sanguine. Alone among 19 towns, Geddes takes its sales tax money in cash. It uses the $2.9 million to pay for its police department and much of its highway budget.

Payments to towns will be phased out over three years.

“We’ll have to crunch, crunch, crunch, but the town of Geddes isn’t going away. We’ll do what we have to do,” Falcone said.

Other towns use all or most of their money to offset county property taxes for residents. Ending those tax credits to towns will gradually restore uniform county tax rates across municipalities, one of the priorities of legislators, Rhinehart said.

But because sales-tax money has been distributed according to population, rather than property assessments, the impact of ending the credits will vary from town to town.

In the unlikely event that next year’s county budget does not increase, the new sales tax formula could lower county taxes for residents of 14 towns, including Geddes, according to projections by the Legislature. But it would raise tax payments in five others: Clay, Elbridge, Fabius, Salina and Van Buren.

Previous mayors had made similar threats, to no avail. Circumstances gave Miner the power to back hers up.

Since 2004, the state Legislature has authorized an extra 1 percent sales tax for Onondaga County. State lawmakers had lined up behind Miner, vowing to give more of that money to the city if it preempted the tax agreement.

Eventually, county legislators were persuaded to find ways to work with the basic plan Mahoney and Miner had negotiated, Mahoney said.

“The prospect of preemption made it so that the mayor didn’t have to do anything different,” Mahoney said. “We found ways on the county side . . . to share with the villages. And we made sure the schools were in.”

North Syracuse Central School District Superintendent Jerome Melvin said he was pleased the city and county were able to agree on a plan that keeps schools in the funding mix. His district will drop from estimated revenue of $1 million in the first year to $500,000 in the second year, and eventually to $250,000, he said.

“A half a loaf, or even a quarter loaf, is better than nothing at all,” Melvin said. “I very much understand the problems the city and county are facing.”